-John Fogerty
Audio post - Played 9 times
“So Happy Together”
Carmaig DeForest - Death Love Groove Party
Knitting Factory Works, 1993
Happy Valentine’s Day (Don’t Get Dumped)
In honor of Valentine’s Day, I’ve made a Valentine’s playlist. I’m sure everyone has more or less soundtracked the day, and these are by no means the only songs that pop into my head. But they’re among the most consistent offenders on Feb. 14ths over the years. Some you may have heard these songs, some you may not have. If you haven’t heard them, I encourage you to follow the links I’ve provided, or to track them down yourself.
Audio post with 4 notes - Played 2 times
“A Topography of Boils”
STNNNG - Dignified Sissy (Modern Radio, 2005)
Audio post with 6 notes - Played 149 times
“Last Ditch Protocol (John Velveteen)”
Elyse Weinberg
Elyse
Tetragrammaton, 1968
Here’s Nico’s cover of David Bowie’s “Heroes.” It appears on 1981’s Drama of Exile, which I’ll admit I haven’t heard yet, but on paper looks like prime Bathroom material. The story of its release is a convoluted one, a he-said-she-said web of different accounts of who stole what master tapes from whom, who screwed whom over, etc. The ‘81 release wasn’t the version Nico wanted released — that didn’t come out until nearly a decade later (give or take, depending on the country). I’m not sure where this leaves “Heroes.”
Taken side by side with her work on Chelsea Girl, her voice seems to have undergone a similar transformation to Joni Mitchell’s. Mitchell’s voice, though, was never as androgynous as Nico’s, even at its huskiest. Less interesting — and frankly, kind of grating — is the fact that Nico’s voice here is treated within an inch of its life, and the rhythm section trades in the krautrock propulsiveness of the original for something that sounds like, well, the Velvet Underground. If VU were playing dad-rock.
This version could easily be dismissed as just a novelty if it weren’t for Nico’s phrasing. While Bowie never strays too far from his rhythm track, Nico displaces certain lines so that they land askew, and then she recovers flawlessly. It gives her version a detached quality that’s totally opposite Bowie’s melodramatic reading. Nico also doesn’t quite sing here: she’s not talking, it’s all pitched. She’s intoning. All of this seems like a choice, though. It doesn’t seem like she’s phoning it in. When she twists Bowie’s lyrics around, as in “I wish you could swim/ like dolphins / dolphins can swim,” you realize you’re hearing someone for whom any semblance of hope is gone. We can be heroes just for a day, but it doesn’t matter. Not one bit. Gloomy, but it sure beats this version of “Heroes” on intrigue alone.
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